The Standard June 14, 2025
As elementary schools in North Carolina are wrapping up for the year, churches and communities are gearing up for Vacation Bible School fun. This is a special time for congregations to extend a warm welcome and sincere hospitality to all children in the area. For many kids, this might be one of the few times they are exposed to hearing about and seeing the love of Jesus up close.
Along with the enormous amount of hands-on preparation, we should be sure to pray for these young souls to be touched by the deep and profound love of God. Many seeds will be planted, no doubt. Lord willing, at least one positive part of the VBS experience will be rooted securely in each child’s heart.
There is no way to quantify how much of an impact this kind of ministry might have had on us as children. We might be astonished if we ever could know the number of Christians who prayed for us when we were Bible school attendees. These prayers could have had and could continue to have eternal consequences for us and for our children, grandchildren and more.
For those of us in our sixties or seventies, nothing says Vacation Bible School quite like the song “Deep and Wide.” It was written in 1947 by Sidney E. Cox, a Major in the Salvation Army, back before the curriculum and music for Bible school became much more elaborate.
As VBS is underway or coming soon all across our state and country, let us remember this prayer of the Apostle Paul which applies to each of us at any age:
“I pray that out of his glorious riches he [the Father] may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” Ephesians 3:16-21
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